


Blooming

by Skylark



Category: The Time Traveler's Wife
Genre: Awkwardness, F/M, Romance, Roses, Time Travel, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-10
Updated: 2012-05-10
Packaged: 2017-11-05 03:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/402134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chrono-displaced persons have a bad habit of meeting the love of their life in backyards, several years too early.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blooming

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS A MILLION YEARS LATE for [](http://gemjam.livejournal.com/profile)[**gemjam**](http://gemjam.livejournal.com/), who won my auction at the "Help The South" fandom auction almost a year ago. Thank you so much for bidding on me! As an apology, I wrote you something a little longer, although it's still pretty short. I hope this is to your liking, and I'm so sorry if it's not—I haven't read this book in a long time. My prompt was, "What I'd love is something from Alba when she's growing up a bit more, maybe in her late teens or early twenties. I'd love to see her falling in love for the first time and how she meets him. Whether it's in a time travelling way like how her parents met or whether she meets him normally but has to make allowances for the time travelling." I've actually had this plot bunny for a year, but just never had time to sit down and write it!

Alba at seventeen has mastered lock picking and various forms of petty theft, but her father never taught her how to pick her way out of a rosebush. The vines are tangled in her hair, and every time she moves she feels prickles of pain across her skin. She takes a shaky gasp and holds still.

“Hello?” someone says. She mutters a curse under her breath. _There’s no place like home,_ she thinks, somewhat wildly. It never works, of course.

She sees a man a few years older than her, peering at her through the leaves. Instantly her hands move to cover herself, but her only reward is new slashes up and down her arms, and she freezes again.

“Alba?” the boy asks. His eyes are a teal blue, like the ocean she sometimes visited with her father, and he keeps his eyes trained on hers, never once wavering. She’s grateful for that.

“I don’t know who you are,” she says.

He peers at her face more closely, and his face clears. “You’re young,” he says, surprised. “I didn’t—we go to college together. You’re…” he drifts off, as if he’s run out of words.

His hands are deft and careful as they peel back the layers of thorns, and she can feel the calluses on his fingertips when they skim accidentally across her skin. She tries not to shiver. Eventually, she’s free enough that she can start pulling herself out, and soon enough she’s free. He fumbles for the blanket he’d brought with him and hands it over, looking down at the ground, suddenly shy.

“My name’s Kyle,” he tries again, “I—”

“Don’t,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t want to know.”

“Yeah, I figured,” he says. “Sorry.”

“Where are we?” she asks.

“In my grandparents’ backyard,” Kyle says. “Michigan. Oh,” he says, belatedly realizing. "June 21, 2023."

\--

In a little while, Alba’s in his clothes, swinging her feet as she sits on a stool in his kitchen, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Kyle knows exactly how she likes them (barely any peanut butter, almost too much jelly for the bread to hold), which is what convinces her more than anything that they must be friends in her future, his present.

But there's more than friendship in the way that Kyle keeps looking at her, nervous and amazed. Once, he begins to reach for her, and then sets his hands on the counter as if he doesn’t know what to do with them. He doesn't try to make conversation.

Alba doesn’t know what to say, either. If this young man is part of her future, she doesn’t want to steal the eventual discovery away from herself later—the eventual unfurling of personality quirks and past stories as a new relationship blooms. Instead, she eats her sandwich and tries to be neat about it, wincing slightly when the jelly smears across her cheek.

“It’s June,” he says. “I’m on summer break right now. No one else is home…I was going to work on something,” he says.

She remembers his callused fingertips, the way his eyes seemed to take in every detail of her face at a glance. “You’re an artist?”

He shrugs, somewhat helplessly. “I sculpt, and paint. It runs in the family,” he says.

“Mine, too.” Alba rests her hand on his, turning it over, running a slightly-sticky fingertip over the rough pad of his index finger. He doesn’t resist. “I could model for you,” she says. “Since we’re already friends, I mean.”

“Are you sure?” he asks. Alba nods.

He looks at her again, and then laughs, running a hand through his hair. “God,” he says, “This is so weird. Okay.”

\--

Alba, 21, receives a large envelope in the mail. _Kyle Richardsen_ , says the return address, and inside is a sketch of her at seventeen wearing Kyle’s favorite t-shirt and worn-out jeans, looking off into the distance in Kyle’s backyard. The rosebush is in the background, and Alba’s hand moves to her upper arm instinctively, where there is a faint, silver scar. The date and time is from a few days ago, and his earlier text suddenly makes sense: _Is this why you asked me out after the first day of class?_

She laughs, and texts him back at last. _I told you we were already friends. You should have believed me._


End file.
